Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The probems of assessing the uses and effects of naval airpower in
WWII

I have had several interesting comments on
my discussion of which aircraft carriers were most effective in WWII and why. I
was reasonably impressed by some comments about the efficacy of Dive Bombers vs
Torpedo aircraft (thanks to those who made them), and did a little more
research along those lines.

What I found was very little definitive
argument, and lots of deterministic laziness along the lines of ‘well this
happened therefore naturally it was absolutely inevitable that it would happen,
and there was never any possibility that anything else would happen’.

I hate this stuff. I have since I played
board games on a regular basis and came across all sorts of stupid rules to
make things happen the way they did, with no allowance for what could have
been. ‘World in Flames’ for instance was great fun, except that it made
absolutely no allowance for the very real possibility that Italy could have
finished on the Allied side not the Axis side.

Unfortunately the same laziness crept into
academic teaching. In one of the courses I taught at Deakin University in the
early 1990’s – War and ModernIndustrial Society – other lecturers were appalled that I could suggest that
Italy being on the Axis side was not absolutely inevitable.

So I started combing discussions of naval
battles of WWII decided (or potentially decided) by airpower, and assessing the
logic of their claims.

Here are a few trite statements that seem
to make reasonable sense:

High level bombing against ships was
usually pointless. (Sometimes described as trying to drop a billiard ball on a
scared mouse.)

The Japanese (or Germans or Italians) had
very little success against Allied fleets when even limited fighter cover was
available to break up attack waves.

If what fighter cover there was could be
drawn down by torpedo bombers, dive bombers had a much better chance.

Japanese fleet fighter cover was often
effective against torpedo aircraft, but their sight based interception was
usually inadequate to prevent dive bombing attacks.

Once the Allies had effective radar
controlled fighter direction for defense, there were very few successful
Japanese (or German or Italian) attacks. [German guided missiles and Kamikaze’s
are limited exceptions here.]

It takes time to develop the correct
techniques for fleet fighter control officers to be effective, and usually the
first few attempts were not very effective.

British fighter direction enabled British
carriers to operate smaller CAP’. (This had been evident when HMS Victoriousserved with he USN in the Pacific in 1943, where the American Admiral had left
Victorious– USS Robin – to run her strength – fighter direction for the fleet –
and Saratoga to run hers – strikes by the fleet. It was even more evident in
1945.)

Here are a few trite comments that are
arguable:

Dive bombers got through more often, but
torpedo bombers were far more likely to knock an opponent out entirely, or put them
out of action.

No available Allied fighters could outfight
Japanese fighters – particularly Zeros – in 1942. (Seems to concentrate on
surprised and outnumbered defenders in the early days and ignore the very good
results of the Flying Tigers P40’s in China and RAF Hurricanes in Burma and USN
Wildcats/RN Martlets at sea if they were prepared and at height.)

The side with the greatest number of
aircraft on their carriers has the advantage. (Seems to ignore the many times
the majority of those aircraft got lost; ran out of fuel and crashed; were too
broken up by fighters to be effective; or failed to do as much damage as they
thought when they did get through. In fact direction and control was far more
important than pure numbers. A dozen aircraft at the right place and time
repeatedly trumped hundreds wandering around all day.)

Still these often overly simplistic
statements give a good start to consider some realities.

Case Study 1. Midway.

The Japanese were entirely reliant on Mark
1 eyeball. The failure of the Japanese scout planes to find the American
carriers an hour earlier may well have decided the battle. Note that it was a
series of accidents – a plane breaking down, replacement launching late, radio
reports not accurate enough, etc – that caused this vital delay, not the actual
abilities or techniques of the Japanese recconnaissance units.

The Americans had the beginnings of radar.
Admittedly, it was not well used, and the fighter direction was inadequately
developed, but it gave them a crucial edge at a vital point. (In all later
battles where they used it more effectively the Japanese failed dismally.)

The vital factor was that the Japanese lack
of radar meant that when their fighter cover was sucked down after American
Torpedo bombers, a group of 32 Dive Bombers won the battle. (Note that, until
the last few months of the war, almost every battle won by naval air power was actually
won by a relatively small group that got through unnapposed for one reason or
another.)

Interestingly Hiryu’s first counter strike
of 18 Dive Bombers and 6 Fighters was mostly broken up by defending American fighters,
but still got 3 hits on Yorktown. But the result was that the defenders were
still moved out of place. The next strike of only 10 TB and 6 F, even though
detected, could not be intercepted in time, and got 2 torpedo hits, dooming
Yorktown.

The counterstrike at Hiryu was only 24 Dive
Bombers, but there were only 4 Fighters left to defend. The result was 4 hits.

Interestingly 35 of 41 American Torpedo Bomber’s
that attacked the Japanese were lost for no hits, and Dive Bomber losses were
thus reduced by the live bait. Whereas the 10 Japanese Torpedo Bombers managed
2 hits for little loss, because the American Fighters had been pulled off by
killing 12 out of 18 Japanes Dive Bombers. (It was radar that made intercepting
these dive bombers possible, but that did not solve the problem of
inexperienced operators not having more fighters in place to face the next
attack.)

Nonetheless Midway was a damn close run
thing. Both sides were lucky to get shots against no fighter protection.These
were the attacks that achieved most of the damage. The only attack that got
through fighter protection was the one where the Japanese took 75%+ losses on
the first strike from Hiryu against Yorktown, despite the fact that they were
doing the much more likely to succeed Dive Bomber attack that time. (And the
three hits only caused limited fires which good damage control managed quickly
enough to resume flying operations).

So the interesting point about Midway is
that the single occasion where the Americans managed to use their fighter
direction successfully probably saved Yorktown.

Case Study 2. Malta Convoys.

Let’s look at how fighter direction really
works.

The Pedestal convoy to save Malta in August
1942 saw the British use 3 aircraft carriers (Victorious, Indomitable and Eagle)
with 100 aircraft (72 of them fighters – 42 Sea Hurricanes, 10 Martlets or F4
Wildcats, and 16 Fulmar) go head to head with 700 Axis aircraft, most of them
German. (Another British carrier, the Furious, accompanied the convoy only long
enough to fly off reinforcing spitfires for Malta, before returning to
Gibraltar, but if the Doolittle raid could be considered a two carrier
operation, I suppose this would count as a four carrier operation?)

The convoy battle breaks into 3 parts. The
first part is the Western Mediterranean combat where the RN successfully
provided air cover against daylight strikes by the Axis. The second part is the
night attacks by submarines or surface raiders like motor torpedo boats in the
Sicialian narrows that smashed up the convoy and did most of the damage – which
happened after the covering force withdrew. The third part sees land base
aircover from Malta successfully shepherd most of the survivors through,
despite their heavy handicap that the two fighter direction cruisers that were
supposed to guide them had both been lost in the night actions. Although the
third part has interesting lessons, only the first part really concerns us
here.

In the first stage there were several
strkes against the convoythat involved 100 aircraft or more, and they came in
so often, and from such varied hieghts and directions, that there were almost
constant attacks. Nonetheless most attacks were intercepted 25 miles out by
goood fighter direction, and, despite the fighter patrols always being very heavily
outnumbered, the majority of attacks were broken up. As a result those planes
that got through had little success, except for a pair of low flying Italian FB
that looked very like Hurricanes trying to land. They got a single ineffective
bomb hit on Victorious. She continued ops.

Unfortunately HMS Eagle was torpedoed by a
submarine, and only the 4 of her fighters that were airborn could go to the
other carriers. This shortage of another deck made the constant fighter patrols
harder and harder to keep up by the two remaining carriers. Eventually a
combined attack of Dive Bombers and Torpedo Bombers got through during the
difficult to defend dusk period, and although Indomitable combed the Torpedo’s,
two 1,100 pound bombs put her deck out of operations. (The 11 of her fighters
which were airborne that could land on Victorious simply made her deck too
overcrowded for effective operations.)

Nonetheless, the only casualty on the
convoy at that point was a single merchant ship damaged. So, had
Malta been a bit closer, it would have been a fabulous victory that well and
truly demonstrated the ability of well directed fighter patrols to take on much
larger numbers of enemy aircraft. (The multiple invasions of Italy, the strikes
on Tirpitz and the Dutch East Indies oil refineries, and the many USN operations
in the Pacific, would demonstrate exactly the same thing again and again later
in the war.)

[It is also important to note that the
Germans were no slouch in radar themselves. The Japanese were never to catch up
with the radar capacity that both sides had at the time of this 1942 battle.]

Now as an opening point, I will say that
Admiral Phillips was a prize idiot, and that I entirely agree with most historians
(and most contemporary admirals at the time), who thought he should never have
been in charge of this operation. (The fast declining First Sea Lord Admiral Pound
was one of his few adherents.)

Why the damn fool didn’t communicate with
his land based support at any point is beyond comprehension. Apparently he
didn’t want to radio even when he knew he had been seen and was being shadowed?
Apparently he thought his land based subordinates would guess where he intended
to go and provide aircover? Apparently, though he knew that there was a
squadron of fighters tasked to him waiting for instructions, he didn’t even
call it when the Japanese strike appeared on radar, or when Prince of Wales was
damaged? The captain of Repulse called air support almost an hour later, and it
arrived only in time to chase the last Japanese planes away?

If fighter cover had been called, even if
only when the attacks actually started, the two case studies quoted above (and
the many others that can be identified throughout the whole war) seem to
suggest that it would have been successful in breaking up the Japanese attacks
enough to make it unlikely that any ships wold have been sunk. Note that in the
above cases all attacks that were intercepted were broken up despite fighter
escort. The Japanese here had no fighter escort (even though a few Japanese
fighters were available and might have had the range).

The Nell and Betty bombers used in this
operation were fast and long ranged, but Allied pilots (and indeed Japanese
aircrews) recognised their appalling vulnerability to air attack by referring
to them as ‘first strike lighters’. Even though the comparatively slow Buffalo
fighters operating from land would have had similar problems of interception of
dive bombers to those both the Japanese and Americans later experienced, there
is little doubt that they would have had very little difficulty in shooting down quite a few of these incredibly
vulnerable aircraft if they attempted low level torpedo strikes. (Note, the low
level torpedo strikes were the killers here. The few high altitiude bomb hits
were not very effective, and the Japanese simply had no dive bombers available
for this action.) The case studies suggest that even if Zekes had escorted the
later strikes and managed to shoot down two thirds of the defending fighters,
the air attacks would still have been too broken up to be successful.

It is common knowledge that the aircraft carrier
HMS Indomitable was supposed to accompany Force Z, until damaged in trials in
the West Indies and delayed. Which has allowed too many people to count to say
that it ws a good thing that she wasn’t there, or she would have ‘almost
certainly’ been lost too. (In fact it is entirely possible that she would have
been too late to get to Malaya in time for this battle even if not damaged, but
for this discussion let us go with the supposition of the argument.)

I have long wondered about the supposition
that Force Z would have been doomed even with a modern heavily armoured
aircraft carrier, with one of the most advanced anti-aircraft batteries, and a
force of radar directed fighters.

To quote Professor David Hummer who published BomberVS Battleship in 1998: “During the Second World War daylight bomber attacks
without fighter escort were almost never successful – or anyway incured heavy
casualties – if the target was defended by high performance fighters, efficient
radar, and effective direction of fighter defence by radio.” He uses more than
a dozen case studies on every front right through the war to prove this point.
(Mind you David Hummer also one of the people who, earlier in the same book,
says Indomitable would have probably been lost. Not sure he bothered to proof
read his own conclusions, or if he genuinely believed this… I suspect he is
just being a prime example of the sort of unthinking laziness I am complaining
about)

So lets look at it.

HMS Indomitable was the latest, largest,
and most powerful armoured aircraft carrier in the RN. Her radar directed AA batteries
alone would have more than doubled Force Z’s anti aircraft firepower. (It is
notable that it was Prince of Wales’ radar being inoperable that day which was
a major contributing factor to the disaster. Indomitable’s radar systems might
have been a useful backup?) Her standard extra destroyer escorts – usually a
cruiser too, but possibly not in this case – would not have hurt either.

Indomitable was attacked many times in the
war, and hit on several occassions. Two German 1,100 pound bombs actually put
her out of flying operations during the Pedestal battle mentioned above (though
she steamed away at 28 knots), and a German torpedo also put her into drydock once,
though a Japanese Kamikaze just bounced off later in the war. (None of the six Illustrious class armoured carriers were actually sunk, despite all of them receiving
bomb or kamikaze or torpedo damage, most of them on multiple occassions. And
even after taking 6 hits from German dive bombers and having her flight deck
out of operation, Illustrious continued to fight as an anti-aircraft vessel for
weeks while initial repairs were completed.)

Indomitable also had highly skilled fighter
operations officers, who had managed to learn a lot from the many battles
fought using radar interception and fighter guidance in the Mediterranean. Her
21 fighters (12 Fulmar and 9 Sea Hurricanes) were the same models that proved
so effective in the Pedestal convoy against air strikes very similar to the
ones force Z faced… with four differences.

First, the Axis had 700 aircraft operating
against Pedestal, the Japanese a little over 100 against Force Z.

Second, the Axis had plenty of fighter
suppport. The Japanese had none.

Third, the Axis strikes came in waves all
day against a very slow convoy on a completely predictable course. The Japanese
strike had spent hours looking around a vast area before giving up and then
accidentally stumbling over the fast moving battleships on the way home.

Fourth, the Axis arrived in groups of up to
100 a time. The Japanese attacks dribbled in. 8 Nells at 1100, 17 Nells at
1130, another 6 at 1140, then several Betty’s at between 1215 and 1240.

[I suppose the fifth factor to consider
might be that even though operation Pedestal was escorting lots of slow and
vulnerable merchant ships, it was nevertheless a large and well organised fleet
of dozens of warships, not a smallraiding force of less than half a dozen.
Later fleet actions all tend to show that the bigger and more powerful the
fleet being attacked, the less results are achieved for a given number of
attackers.]

Returning to the attack on Force Z:

It is hard to imagine that working radar
would have let there be any element of surprise in the attack.

It is hard to imagine how 20 fighters could
not have broken up these waves of attack if fighter direction officers using
radar had intercepted them 25 miles away?

It is hard to imagine that the extra
squadron of fighters from shore would not have been called by experienced
fighter direction officers. (British carrier doctrine was experienced enough by
this stage of the war to let the carrier force commander make aircover
decisions without asking the admiral in charge of the fleet… something US
carriers would also get around to… after Coral Sea and a couple of other
learning experiences.)

It is very hard to imagine that the
integrated Force Z would have been as vulnerable with a co-ordinated air
defence. (On the way to the Far East, Prince of Wales had fought a convoy
through to Malta in company with another battleship and an aircraft carrier -
Rodney and Ark Royal. Despite Axis efforts, the co-ordinated force had good
enough fighter direction that attacks were broken up and came in piecemeal,
allowing the Prince of Walses to shoot down several Axis planes during very
similar raids… quite a difference a bit of air support makes.)

Now perhaps Prince of Wales would still
have been damaged by the lucky shot that hit her steering early in the battle.
(Steering is always the weak point of a battleship… ask Bismarck.) but even
with no air cover she was still fighting when Repulse was sunk an hour later.
With Indomitables aircover, fighter direction, and anti-aircraft firepower…
plus extra fighter cover from land?

The more analysis I read of the effect of
even limited aircover on the effeciency of attackers, the more I think that the
statement, “Indomitable would almost certainly have been lost too”, is just
lazy thinking.

[I do note that Hummer suggests that the Japanese had 25
Zeke’s available which were not used. He says, ‘as they surely would have been’,
had the Japanese known there was a carrier present. Surely the Japanese knew
the British had fighter cover available? They certainly can’t have been
assuming Phillips was too stupid to call for it? And perhaps the fact that the
strike of Nell’s and Betty’s – with over 3000 miles range each - found Force Z accidentally on the way
back from hours of fruitless searching may be a consideration on whether the
Zeke’s – about 1000 miles range normally, or 1,600 with the later drop tanks -
were actually likely to be there? At least until the very last strikes? More
laziness?]

It is interesting to note that although
everyone is very impressed by what the Japanese Naval Air arm achieved when
there was no , or little, airborne opposition, the results when there is any
airborne aopposition are suprisingly different.

Pearl Harbour, Force Z, and the Darwin raid are good examples of what can be achieved when there is very little
airborne opposition. (Though it is interesting to note that Nagumo’s best
reason for not mounting a third strike at Pearl Harbour was that the casualties
of the second strike had doubled even as results declined, and if this had
continued losses would have possibly outwieghed the net benefit of another
strike. I, and many others, disagree: but it was a very reasonable point.)

By contrast the raids on Ceylon and Midway
demonstrate that any airborne defense drastically reduced the effectiveness of
the raiders. The first strike on Ceylon at Colombo – anywhere between 70% and 90%
of the size of the first strike on Pearl Harbour depending on whose figures you
accept – achieved trivial results by comparison. The airfields were not knocked
out, port infrastructure was hardly touched (though the bombing of the insane
asylum instead of the fuel tanks might have contributed to this failure), and
only an old destroyer and an armed merchant cruiser were actually lost. This
despite the fact that the radar had been down for maintainance, so most of the
defending fighters were caught on the ground.

When they did take off, the 41 defending
fighters lost half their number, but clearly managed to disrupt the attackers
quite significantly. The limited opposition the Japanese actually faced clearly
had very impressive effects on reducing their results.

By contrast the second and much smaller
wave was directed againt the two British cruisers – Dorsetshire and Cornwall – discovered while the first
attack was going on. These strikes had no airborne opposition, and therefore
had complete success, with quite outstanding accuracy.

The second attack at Trincomalee a few days
later achieved remarkably similar results to the Colombo attack. There were
less fighters availble – only 23 in fact – but they were in the air and
achieved similar effects to the 41 at Colombo. For losses of half their number,
the attacks were broken up enough to be limited in effect. There was more
damage to the dockyards (with no mental asyluym to be a distraction this time),
but the harbour and shipping were hardly touched. The worst losses were the
planes undergoing refit or repair on the ground at the airfields and naval
base, many of which were destroyed.

With spooky similarity, the second strike
was again diverted by the discovery of nearby warships: this time the ancient
little aircraft carrier Hermes and her destroyer escort a bit further up the
coast. (Note that this same pattern would of course be followed again, at
Midway.)

The second, and smaller, strike had the
traditional success that attended an unapposed air attack, and easily sunk both
ships, again with remarkable accuracy. The fighters that might have intercepted
were delayed in being dispatched, and arrived too late to intefere. (They may
have been too late anyway, but it is interesting to note that even light
fighter coverage would have certainly reduced the effectiveness of the attacks…
though probably not enough to save the elderly and very vulnerable Hermes.)

It is interesting to note the differences
in effectiveness between the fighter intercepted strikes by bigger forces, and
the unapposed strikes by smaller forces. It cannot be that, on both occassions
(as at Midway a few weeks later), the Japanese pilots had lost the skills that
served them at Pearl and Darwin completely during the first strikes, and
magically rediscovered them an hour or two later. The pathetic results achieved
in the first strikes, compared to the impressive – almost clockwork – results
of the second strikes, make clear statements about the effectiveness of any
sort of air interception.

Most notably the air defence at Colombo,
even though caught on the ground, and losing half its numbers when it did get
in the air, made the results of the Colombo raid almost laughably small.

Case Study 6. The ‘almost but not-quite’
Battle of Ceylon

This leads to another interesting series of
‘inevitable’ statements that can be analysed.

The whole purpose of the Japanese Indian
Ocean raid in April 1942was to try and catch the British Eastern Fleet and
defeat it before it was fully assembled. (The RN had 2 more carriers and 4 more
batteships were on the way to reinforce the 3 and 5 respectiveley already
present.).

The fundamental Japanese problem was that
they faced a two front naval war (as well as a 3 front land war – counting
China and later Russia). Having failed to complete the job at Pearl Harbour,
this raid ws their one and only attempt to knock out the other threat axis
before turning back to face the Pacific again.

However Admiral Nagumo made the same mistake as
at Midway. The first strikes went after harbours, rather than find the ships which
are the real point of the operation and strike them. As a result, although the
second and later strikes at Colombo, Trincomalee and Midway all succeded in
knocking out major Allied warships, they didn’t come close to the major naval
victory that was required to save their position long term.

Nonetheless book after book, and article
after article, claim that it was lucky that the Japanese did not find the
British Eastern Fleet, because it would “certiainly have been destroyed”, or
“there could only be one outcome”.

These statements are, again, nicely
deterministc, but again, very lazy. They assume that something would
automatically have happened, despite the evidence that the same authors quote
in every other case study they use?

Basic point is that the Eastern Fleet only
had 3 aircraft carriers (2 modern armoured and the old Hermes) and although it
had 5 battleships, half a dozen cruisers and a score of destroyers, they were
mostly older and less well eqipped vessels. Therefore, it is argued, they could
not have withstoood the Japanese striking force which contained five carriers
and four modernised battlecruisers. (The minor niggling point here being that
the ship vs ship odds were far more in the British here favour than the ship vs
ship odds were at Midway, but the same authors don’t seem to have a ‘inevitable
defeat for the USN’ line going there? Perhaps because reality demonstrated that
theory is nothing like ‘inevitable’?)

The strength of the ‘inevitable’ case is the air strength of the five Japanese carriers in the main strike force – Akagi, Horyu, Siryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku
(Kaga had been forced home for refit, and to replace her significant aircraft and aircrew losses from several months of non-stop operations). Between them they had a theoretical 300 aircraft
available (how many were down for maintanance is still uncertain, but Kaga was obvously
not the only one to have served for several hard months straight, lets be
generous and say 80%-90% operable), to face the 200 odd on the British side.

The 3 British carriers of course had far
less aircraft than the 3 American ones did at Midway. In fact Hermes was really
an escort carrier and was not available at the time a fleet action almost
happened, so it really comes down to the 88 aircraft on Victorious and
Indomitable VS the 250-275 on the five Japanese carriers.

This is where stements of ‘inevitability’
sound convincing. For if Nagumo could get a straight fleet action in daylight
of 270 aircraft against 88, he was unlikely to lose.

If.

Hmmm.

A few problems with this.

First, British intelligence knew he was
coming, and Admiral Somerville had waited in ambush for 3 days. Only delays by the
Japanese meant that Somerville returned to port even as the Japanese arrived
and were spotted by the reconnaissance patrols waiting for them. So, as at
Midway, Japanese surprise was not an option.

Second, Somerville had absolutely no
intention of facing the superior Japanese air numbers in daylight. Not least
because his slow biplane strike aircraft would have been even easier to kill
than the equivalent American Devestator torpedo bombers were at Midawy.
(Actually this is unfair to the Devestator’s, as the much vaunted and much more
survivable Avengers were also smashed out of the sky for no actual result at Midway.
Without massive fighter protection, no torpedo bomber managed to survive to
attack successfully, anywhere, any time during the Second World War.)

Somerville, the very experienced leader of
the world’s first successful Fast Carrier Task Force – Force H of Ark Royal, Renown and Sheffield with their destroyers – in the Mediterranena and Atlantic
for two years of combat, knew the limitations of his forces well.

Instead Somerville planned to use the
strengths of his fleet and aircraft, principally radar. (Somerville was a radar specialist who had headed Admiralty developments of radar in 1939-40.)

Somervilles carriers and battleships had
years of experience with radar, and radar interception, and radar fighter
direction, and radar equipped aircraft mounting strikes. As a result, the Royal
navy was the only force that had vast experience of radar fighter
intecrception, and the only force that could mount radar directed night
airstrikes.

Whereas the Americans and Japanese both
lost many aircraft during the war because they did not get home before dark,
the British had no trouble in mounting night strikes at Taranto and against the
Bismarck at sea before returning to their carriers. (Which meant their
obsolescent strike aircraft – Sworfish and Albacores – were probably more
likely to succeed in getting through at night than anyone else's obsolescent strike
aircraft – Kate’s, Judy’s, and Devestator’s for instance – were to succeed against
fighter defences during the day!)

There are lots of ifs and buts possible
here, but lets go with the straight scenario.

On the Easter Sunday when the Colombo
strike was launched, Somerville was heading with his Force A (armoured carriers
Victorious and Indomitable, modernised battleship Warspite, two cruisers and
several destroyers), to meet the two other British cruisers – Dorsetshire and
Cornwall – heading south from Colombo. The plan was to join up and be in
position for a night strike on Nagumo’s fleet as it withdrew south after the
Colombo raid. A couple of hundred miles behind Force A was Force B, 4 old
battleships, more cruisers and destroyers, which Somerville hoped to rendevous
with at first light (or retire on at night if Nagumo got frisky with his fast
battlecruisers).

When the second Japanese strike (80 dive
bombers) was diverted to strike Dorsetshire and Cornwall, they appeared on
Somervilles radar. But the cruisers radio messages had not got through, so
Somerville did not send fighter support.

Some writers (like Harmer) say that if he
had realised what was going on, he would have faced the dilemma of sending
fighters and revealing his presence, thus risking the Japanese finding his
fleet by day and sinking it: or abandoning the cruisers.

This perspective misses a few points.

First, there is no question Sommerville
would have sent support if he had known. He was that kind of man, and his
record of such actions in the Mediterranean was clear.

Second, given all we have looked at above,
there is considerable question whether the dive bomber attacks would have
succeeded so well if support had been available. Certainly they would have
suffered casualties.

Third, it is almost incomprehensible that
Nagumo did not search in the direction the two cruisers were going anyway?
Again we ask, what the hell he thought he was doing if not searching for the fleet
that was his main target? Did he just assume they were running away without considering any other options? (Just another sample of him being a far poorer
admiral than many people give him credit for.)

Fourth, if Nagumo had realised that there
must be British carriers to the south, would he have launched a strike in the
vague direction and hoped for the best (as was tried and failed so often in the
Pacific conflicts)? Or would he have launched search aircraft while he prepared
another strike (as sometimes happened in the Pacific)?

If his search aircraft had found the
British carriers (without being interecepted by radar directed fighters), would
it have been too late in the day to do anything other than launch the dusk
suicide attacks that failed so dismally for both the Japanese and the Americans
later in the war?

If some of Nagumo’s strike or strikes (say
the third or fourth strikes of the day… so how big? Later wartime actions had
these strikes at no more than 30 aircraft at a time….), had found the
British carriers, would the radar directed fighter interception have been any less
effective than they were aginst much larger strikes in the Mediterranean?

If some (probably dive bombers) had got
through, and had managed some hits on the British armoured carriers, would
their 500lb bombs have had any effect? (Given that it usually took 1,100b bombs
to damage the armoured carriers, and most later hits by bombs or Kamikaze’s simply
bounced off.)

Would the inevitable reports by overexcited
Japanese pilots of burning or sinking British carriers (see any action of the
whole war), have enticed Nagumo to stay in the area for more strikes in the
morning… which is exactly what Somerville wanted?

Or would Nagumo’s strikes/reconnaissance
have missed the fast force A completely and either found nothing, or found the
slow Force B further away instead… with the same implications for suicidal dusk
attacks one way and possible night strikes the other?

Note that even without Nagumo knowing
Somerville was there, Force A’s aircraft found Nagumo’s fleet at 6pm.
Unfortunately Nagumo was heading North East by then, and constant patrolling
overnight did not find him before he was well out of range.

All this is failry whimsical speculation.
But the more you read about all the other naval air actions of the war, the
more you realise just how much difference radar made. When the Japanese and the
Americans were both stumbling around trying to find each other, the accidental
sightings and even more accidental chances of so many aircraft from this large
strike and so many from that smaller strike actually finding anything to attack
is quite incredible. By contrast the minute the Americans have a fraction of
radar ability, Japanese results spiral downwards at a remarkable pace. (In fact
in direct proprtion to how American results spiral upwards!)

Why wouldn't radar have had the same effect in the Indian Ocean?

If Nagumo had had the fortune to find the
British fleet before he started his other strikes; and if his planes had been
able to find it in large enough groups; and if radar fighter direction didn’t
work as well as in the Mediterranean; and if the resulting damage to the
armoured carriers had been greater than any other sample of damage I can find
in the other battles where Japanese naval aircraft found American carriers:
then Nagumo might have won a great victory.

But that’s a lot of if’s.

At the other end, if Nagumo had realised
the British were there, or manouvred for a dawn strike, or just continued south
instead of north east, then would a night strike by Somervilles aircraft have
worked?

The impressive results at Taranto argue the British aircraft and crew were good
enough, but that was against parked ships. (Though admittedly well prepared,
unsuprised, and heavily defended ones.) The multiple hits by very few aircraft
on Bismarck at high speed at sea (in dreadful weather and/or at night) from both Victorious and Ark
Royal argue that the much larger and less easy to miss Japanese fleet would
have been fairly vulnerable. (Interestingly most wartime actions reveal that the
bigger the fleet by day the better its defenses work, but the bigger by night
the more vulnerable to air or torpedo boat attack.)

Frankly it is not reasonable to suggest
that either side was likely to score a Midway style knockout blow in such
circumstances. Either would have to have a lot of things run in their favour to
do so. But then again, a lot of small suprises running together is what
actually happened at Midway isn’t it?

What you can say is that, given the ship VS
ship and aircraft VS aircraft odds, and the technological gaps, the US victory
at Midway was somewhat less likely than the British achieving at least a Coral
Sea like standoff at Ceylon. (In fact if radar is as vital as most of the
discussions suggest, there was considerably more chance of a British victory at
Ceylon than was reasonable to expect of a USN victory at Midway.)

But that is just speculation.

Nonetheless it all gives more reason to be
very suspicious of statements of ‘inevitability’. Likely is one thing, but
certainty is quite another.

About Me

A professional historian and educator challenges some assumptions.
(A sometimes tongue-in-cheek polemic, with a Socratic emphasis on challenging people to argue back. Please do so... I make some of it outrageous largely to encourage a debate).